Bear (Was: HORSA vs. EXWA)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Tavi" wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" wrote:

> > This looks pretty 'Kurganic' to me.

> But "Kurganic" isn't synonym to "IE". In fact, Anatolian (Hittite) is
> the *least* Kurganic of all the attested IE languages, having a more
> archaic morphology and phonology than the rest (although apparently some
> IE-ists seem oblivious to that). In my own interpretation of R. Adrados'
> model (somewhat modulated by Villar), Kurganic would be the direct
> ancestor of Greek-Armenian, Indo-Iranian and Dacian (Albanian), and
> possibly Celtic as well, but only a *superstrate* to the rest of IE
> languages except Anatolian.

And the first six groups all show reflexes of *h2r.tkos! That's why I said it looked pretty 'Kurganic'.

> > A cluster -rtk- or -rtk^- invites irregular development,
> > though the development here doesn't seem so irregular.

> Celtic and Hittite have /t/.

Hittite has /tk/.

> Greek has /kt/.

Does -rkt- survive well in Celtic. If not, -rtk- > -rkt- > -rt- looks a pretty reasonable progression.

> Latin, Iranian, Armenian and Albanian have /s/ ~ /S/ ~ /j/.

> Not only that, but /s/ is also *unexpected* here (assuming it's the
> reflex of *k'), because Latin is a "centum" language. Hence the
> hypothesis of borrowing from another IE language is plausible.

For Latin, there's strong evidence for t > ts before stops - nor is this restricted to Latin. The extreme example is -tt- > -ss-, though -st- is also an outcome.

Richard.